Connecting yard wiring to intra-cabinet control house wiring in an electrical substation has historically been a labor-intensive task. Typically yard cables are run either overhead or in underground ducts and are brought up into a substation, into a control house, into individual cabinets, and then terminated cable by cable, wire by wire, at components within the control house. Each of the cables and wires must be carefully identified, labeled and tested in the field. Connection and testing of each wire can take several hours of technician time per wire, and such a labor-intensive installation increases the likelihood of errors in the field.
A system according the present disclosure saves installation and testing time by providing a pre-integrated yard interface connector (YIC) cabinet that has a plug bulkhead plate accessible from outside of a control house that houses the cabinet. The plug bulkhead plate has a plurality of connectors that mate with connectors on yard cables that have been pre-bundled for connection between field devices (such as transformers, breakers, switchgears, and the like) and the plug bulkhead plate. Instead of running individual wires from terminal blocks at the field devices, technicians connect the pre-bundled yard cables between connectors at the field device and the plug bulkhead plate in the YIC cabinet. The YIC cabinet comprises outside doors that open to reveal the plug bulkhead plate and to provide access for technicians to connect the yard cables. Internal wires extend from the back side of the plug bulkhead plate and terminate at a terminal block within the cabinet.